The Primal's
by Gideon Ravenor
Summary: A global conspiracy to cover up the past and find the key to mankinds future, a few remnants of the old world fight against their ancient enemies to save mankind from a dark future with ancient powers facing a new world where no where is safe.


War machinery roared and bellowed, spitting clouds of caustic, lung-tarring smoke, cracking white marble beneath splayed black iron claws. A hundred and sixty machines pulled like blood-crazed hounds on chains in the courtyard of the temple. The air reeked of incense, blood offerings, rage and sweat. Over five thousand mortals in black armour and canvas hoods cowered in the shadow of the heavy raging machines, armed with swords, spears and bizarre pulsing weapons.

Vulcanis cast his gaze across the throng of mortals with a withering stare.

"I need more" he said, a voice echoing with a thousand different tones, malice and hate dripping from every syllable like poison.

'A hundred and sixty is all we have,' replied Shahashizar, comparing the placement of war engines with the ideal formations plotted out by himself less than a day ago. 'The temple warriors here will pose little threat to us".

'You sound like we are battling a group of quivering milk maids on a summers eve,' said Vulcanis.

'I am not a dimwit,' said Shahashizar, struggling to keep the annoyance from his voice. 'I know their capabilities of the temple and its guards as well as you. My calcualtions are right, factoring in losses as well.'

'And what if they have more of my kind with them?'

'Why would they?'

'Because this is the last temple, and they haven't got all of the Primals out... I can feel it,' said Vulcanis.

'A temple like any other,' said Shashizar with a shrug as they reached a group of warriors crouched behind a large bronze shield and bearing a bizarre black contraptions that made a wailing noise as they moved. The men were tense, awaiting the order to advance into the teeth of the defenders arrows, fire and lighting. For men under the threat of their impending death, they appeared remarkably composed.

Vulcanis rounded on his advisor. 'No, it is not mortal. They are the last of their kind here, they will be the best we have faced you must know this. They fear us, yes, but not so much that they will break and run when the first wall land amongst them. So long as their faith in the Primals stand, so too will they.'

'You admire them!' hissed Shashizar.

'I do not admire them, fool, remember I used to be one of them so to were you' countered Vulcanis, the air seeming to grow darker by several degrees as he spoke.

Shashizar pointed to the thousands of men gathered around them. 'Plenty of meat and bone to break the walls if the machines fail.'

Vulcanis turned to the group of men sheltering behind the shield. With a casual flick of his wrist, he pulled his sword its scabbard. Its name was Inferno, and its dull bronze blade was scored and nicked where swords and axes had torn into it, yet the pointed tip of its blade was as sharp as the day it had been taken from the forge of mount Arrat.

As a tool of war, Inferno had countless victories to its name. As a weapon, it had taken the head of ten Primals, had split the spine of the Sentinel guardian of the Desert temple and hewed innumerable humble rank and file warriors in the bloody heave and swell of close combat.

Vulcanis jabbed his blade into the nearest warriors back. Blood squirted out around the embedded blade, and the man jerked as his ruptured spinal column sent contradictory nerve impulses around his dying body as his life blood turned to steam as it hit the blade.

'Mortal muscle to drive the wheels of war is in plentiful supply, and can be easily replaced when the hammer strikes' said Vulcanis, annoyed at needing to explain his methods to Shashizar. 'These engines you see are far more difficult to replace.'

Vulcanis withdrew his blade from the split body as another mortal ran up from the rear ranks to pick up his pulsing weapon. The dead mortals former comrades threw his body in front of a machine, to be crushed into the marble floor as the battle began.

Using Inferno like a walking stick, Vulcanis moved across the courtyard, gazing at the temple as he advanced. The warriors gazed up in awe and terror as he passed, which was as he liked it. He was marching them to their deaths, but even marching out into a hell of fire, lighting and battle was more sensible a notion than displeasing their master.

Shashizar watched his every move like a dog staring at a wounded beast, searching for a weakness an opening, but Vulcanis knew he would find no such opportunity. His advisor had come to him from the survivors of Desert temple, the first temple he had destroyed, and though those priests and sentinels had sworn loyalty to their order, they were little better than whipped dogs, volatile and always looking for opportunities.

Vulcanis paused at the twitching engine closest to the front of the army, a towering four legged beast on splayed iron feet and with a large black muzzle protruding from its chest, a weapon that pulsed with blue light from within it which had brought ruin to many temples. From this battle he would finally find them. Flexible pipes at its sides pulsed like intestines, coursing with trapped energy that would be used to decimate the defenders and allow the mortal warriors to the walls.

The temple courtyard was a large square of pure white marble, something that grated on Vulcanis's nerves. They were fighting at night and night fighting should be dark not illuminated by glowing marble. It made no difference to the impending battle, but it offended his sense of the way war should be. Vulcanis knew the nuances of war better than anyone, and it was said with only a spoonful of irony that it spoke to him.

Where there was a soft spot, Vulcanis would find it. Where the enemies' moral was weakest and close to breaking, he would know of it. Just by immersing himself in battle, Vulcanis could know its hidden strengths, its complex weaknesses and its inherent flows. Where others might mount a charge with more flair or know best when a siege was practical, no-one knew war better than he.

Vulcanis thought deeply about the plan he had just drawn up and with a word Shashizar moved with the speed of one who knows well his master's desires. Vulcanis checked the distance between his machines and the temple walls, the warriors and the routes of his men once they started for the walls.

'This is all wrong!,' he said sending a whip of fire into the sky as he jumped onto the top of a war machine who's blackened caprice was covered in scars from old battles. The machine had been a gift from the new forges he established after the defeat of the sentinels at Mount Arrat, and was, to Vulcanis's eyes, over the top. The "head" was set behind a heavy crown of flared horns and armoured in sheets of layered black metal, with only a thin slit through which it could "see".

He traced a hand over the runes carved into its carapace. A hybrid thing of machine parts and dark magic, it had once been the soul of a sentinel whose mortal remains had been ripped apart and his soul bound to this tomb of cursed metal.

'Brother Hephaestus,' said Vulcanis, looking down at the runes around the engines collar. 'Pull back a few metres' Raising his voices above cacophony of the army.

'I will shall not,' answered the engine, the voice a dry, rasping thing spitting fl ain't embers from the stylised grinning maw. 'To shed first blood, I must be ahead of the horde.'

Vulcanis sighed. No man who could walk, wield a weapon or think would wish to demean himself by operating one of these machines, yet they were an integral part of his army. Just another of the many necessities inherent to the world. Only those plucked from terrible ills or are too badly injured to survive were deemed fit for such duties and even then they weren't the most suitable candidates.

'You will pull back,' commanded Vulcanis. 'The first walls need to be destroyed unison. The stone is layered with staggered bands of metal and enchantments and will not collapse if not overloaded with brutal force. You understand?'

Hephaestus stared at Vulcanis, though it was impossible to tell what was going through his torn soul. The similar urge to wreak harm and inflict mayhem that saw many engines reduced to blood-crazed madness afflicted the machine spirits, though their madness was of an altogether more dangerous kind.

The kind that could cause a wall to topple.

'I... I understand,' said Hephaestus in his rasping tongue. A blurt of sparks blurted from his helmets maw, and Vulcanis was glad that he had finally got through to the spirits reason.

'Just get it done,' said Vulcanis. At that the engine started moving backwards with earth shaking steps.

Vulcanis leapt down from the war engine and slammed to the floor, walking along side it until he was satisfied the machine was where it was supposed to be. He banged a hand on the side of the machine and continued walking. The ground was becoming black from the soot and blood from the machines and the men.

'Is everything ready?' asked Vulcanis in a deep hate filled voice.

Shashizar stood and gave a curt nod. 'It is ready, my lord,' he said. "As ready as ever, their walls are as strong as Arrats".

Vulcanis shook his head at such ill-placed nostalgia. 'Arrats walls failed in the end, didn't it?' Shashizars jawline clenched. 'It's defenders failed,' he said. 'Not its walls.'

Vulcanis never missed a chance to remind his men that they had destroyed their own brothers after their defeat and assimilation into his army. It seemed perverse to twist such a knife in the guts of his men, but Shashizar had long-since learned to let such barbs pass without comment.

'But the rock of this temple will fall?' asked Vulcanis.

'It will not stand before the power of your armies,' Shashizar assured him, meeting Vulcanis's statement with a caustic retort.

'I always thought it would,' said Vulcanis with a lopsided grin. The upper part of the his face was a knotted mass of scar tissue, the result of a close encounter with a bolt of lightning and an angry Primal. What might once have been considered roguish was now pulled into a permanently sardonic leer. One arm was encased in scaled bronze war plate pulled from the body of a dead Sentinel etched with tiny runes shimmering with the faintest internal light, the other was bare flesh criss-crossed with scars.

Vulcanis saw Shashizars attention and lifted the arm up before him.

'The whole temple could fall on me and it would have a scratch'

'The rest of us would be dead, though,' pointed out Shashizar.

Vulcanis grinned. 'Always so literal,' he said. 'I think that's the real reason I took you in.'

'Then that just shows how little you know,' snapped Shashizar.

'Who is leading the assault my lord?' questioned Shashizar.

'Me'.

Shashizar nearly dropped his jaw is shock.

'What? Why? Are you insane?' demanded Shashizar. 'Why would you order such a thing?'

'It's been too long since I got my hands dirty with a sword and broke the backs of my enemies,' said Vulcanis. 'I need to get back to what I do best, killing.'

'Why are you really doing this?' asked Shashizar .

'Do I need a reason?' countered Vulcanis.

'If you are trying to prove a point, you are being foolish' countered Vulcanis.

'And what point would I be proving?'

'That you're a true Primal,' said Shashizar. 'A true son of the gods.'

'Do I need to prove that? Look at where we are. No one has ever came this far' said Vulcanis.

Shashizar shook his head and lowered his voice so that no-one but Vulcanis would hear him.

'No matter how many wars you make, no matter how many bastions you storm or fortresses you raze, they will never respect you as the true Primal. This will make no difference to how these warriors see you. To them you will always be the traitor.'

Vulcanis put a hand on Shashizars shoulder and turned him towards the light of the temple.

'Beyond those walls are my enemies,' said Vulcanis. 'Behind me are warriors who would happily turn their weapons on me if they thought they could get away with it. Do you really think I'm doing this to try and impress anyone? I know who I am, and I don't give a damn what anyone thinks of me.'

'Then what do you hope to achieve?'

'I need them to see me make war like a Primal of old,' said Vulcanis, leaning in close and baring his teeth in sudden anger. 'Even if they never accept me as one, I need them to know that I fight like one. I need them to understand that if anything happens to me, if any of them make a move against me, then they're all going to die here. I'm the only one who can win the war with the temple bastards, and I want them to know that. Without me, this war is over.'

'And if we die out there?' asked Shashizar as Vulcanis walked away. 'What happens then?' 'We'll be dead,' said Vulcanis. 'What does it matter what happens after that?'...

As Yusuf closed the old book and placed it on the shelf by the roaring crackling fire he turned to the small child sitting on the floor in front of his large armchair.

"Off with you child, it's late you need sleep" said Yusuf in soft tones.

"But Papa Yusuf! The story it's not finished!" Said the child staring wide eyed at the man.

"Ezekiel bed... Now" said Yusuf as the boy got off the rug and trudged up the stair case.

"This story is finished young one, but yours is just beginning..." whispered Yusuf to himself as the boy disappeared upstairs.


End file.
